“See you to night,” he said.
“What about Wulf? Don’t you need me to disguise your bread crumbs?”
“I’ll manage.”
So I’m a wimp. Better a warm, dry wimp than a dead, hypothermic idiot. And when I got the chance, I’d do something nice for Diesel.
I WAS ON the Atlantic City Expressway, en route to the Turnpike, and Martin Munch blew past me. He was doing ninety in the rain, driving a mud-?splattered Audi. I would never have noticed, but he cut out around me, and I caught a flash of red hair and a vision of him hunched up on the wheel. I put my foot to the floor, and the Subaru lurched forward.
After a mile, Munch pulled right, took the exit, and I followed. It was Saturday afternoon, we were in the middle of a monsoon, and Martin Munch felt compelled to drive two exits down the Expressway to a junk shop masquerading as a crafts and antiques fair. The parking lot was vast and empty. The building was a renovated, industrial-?size chicken coop. The walls were cement block, and the roof was tin. Inside the chicken coop, the rain on the roof was deafening.
I’d stealthily squished across the lot and entered the building several steps behind Munch. I was wet and disgusting and not feeling at my best, but getting passed by Munch on the highway was an act of God I couldn’t ignore. He cruised the corncob dolls and miniature wooden hand-?painted cranberry buckets that said PINE BARRENS, USA and, on the bottom in small letters, MADE IN CHINA. He meandered into an aisle of dented lunch boxes from the 1950s and Howdy Doody puppets. He paused to heft an antique Etch A Sketch, and I thought, Come to mama.
“Martin Munch?” I asked him.
He turned and looked at me. “Yes.”
Clink. I clapped the cuffs on him.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“I work for your bail bondsman. You missed your court appearance. And I chased you through the woods yesterday.”
“Jeez. You scared the heck out of me. I thought you were one of those crazy Pine People. There’s an old guy who thinks he’s the Easter Bunny. And the worst of all is the Jersey Dev il. You can hear him flying around at night, and his eyes glow in the dark. I saw something big and black with glittery eyes in the bush, and I started running.”
“What were you doing in the woods?”
“I was going to check on a house, and I didn’t want to take the ATV through the bog in the dark.”
“Gail Scanlon’s house?” I asked.
I never heard his answer because there was pain. It went through me like lightning. I went to my hands and knees and saw a pair of expensive black boots and black slacks with a razor-?sharp crease step into my field of vision. I looked up and saw Wulf staring down at me. He was even more impressive and frightening in daylight. He was big and ghostly pale. His eyes were black, shaded by thick black lashes. He reached out to me, and when he touched me, there was more pain, and then nothing.
Stephanie Plum 14.5 - Plum Spooky
SIXTEEN
MY MIND CAME awake before my body. I was thinking, and then I was hearing. I opened my eyes, and I could see, but I couldn’t move. I was stretched out on a bed, and Munch was poking me like I was a yeast roll and he was testing my freshness.
“Stop it,” I said. “What the heck are you doing?”
“I wanted to see if you were awake.”
“What hit me?”
“Wulf. He’s awesome. It’s like he’s not even human or something. It’s like he’s some sort of dark titan.”
I could feel tingling in my fingers and toes. The tingling moved along my arms and legs, and there was a rush of heat throughout my body.
“He’s not a titan,” I said. “He’s just a big, scary, creepy guy in expensive clothes. What are you doing with him?”
“We’re partners. We’re going to take over the world.”
“Get real.”
“Actually, I don’t really care about that,” Munch said. “I just want to be able to do my experiments. And I want to get chicks.”
“Excuse me?”